Answer: Crossing red with white is the most efficent way to produce pink flowers.
Explanation:
Let's call the "red" allele R and the "white" allele r. A red flower would have both copies of R, and its genotype would be RR, a white flower would have both copies or r, being rr, and a pink flower would be Rr (heterozygote).
We can represent crosses between individuals by Punnet squares. From pink flowers you can get gametes R and r, from red flowers you can get only R gametes and from white flowers only r. If we put male gametes in the first row and female gametes on the first column, we get the following cases:
a: Crossing pink with pink, we get a ratio of a red flower to a white flower to two pink flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & R & r \\ \ R & RR & Rr \\ \ r & Rr & rr \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
b: Crossing white with pink, we get two pink flowers, and two white flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & r & r \\ \ R & Rr & Rr \\ \ r & rr & rr \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
c: Crossing red with red, we get only red flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & R & R \\ \ R & RR & RR \\ \ R & RR & RR \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
d: Crossing red with pink, we get a ratio of two pink flowers to two red flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & R & R \\ \ R & RR & RR \\ \ r & Rr & Rr \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
e: Crossing white with white, we get only white flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & r & r \\ \ r & rr & rr \\ \ r & rr & rr \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
f: Crossing red with white, we get only pink flowers.
[tex]\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c|c| }\ & R & R \\ \ r & Rr & Rr \\ \ r & Rr & Rr \\ \end{tabular}\end{center}[/tex]
Thus crossing red with white is the most efficent way to produce pink flowers.
